Fun with Giant Unilamellar Vesicles (GUV's):

What a little stress can tell us about the strength and behavior of a bio-material.

Participants start by making their own micropipettes using the pipette puller and microforge. They use electroformation to form the large unilamellar lipid structures, which are then deformed with the micropipette using a simple pressure system. While varying the pressure images are captured using a CCD camera.	The images are then carefully processed to extract out the vesicle's geometrical parameters: outer radius, pipette diameter, in-pipette length.
A Matlab script takes the geometrical data along with pressure data to construct a coherent picture	The final product results in an impressive amount of quantitative data characterizing the shape, size, and state of tension in the vesicle; which in this case allows us to say something about the elastic properties of the membrane.